Many liquid or semi-liquid products, such as glues, hand lotions, shampoos, are bottled in plastic containers or bottles. Plastic provides a lightweight inexpensive method of marketing a product. Plastic bottles come in a variety of sizes and shapes, from cylindrical to oval to rectangular.
Many other products, such as glues, cosmetics, lipsticks and lip balms and antiperspirants, are contained within a tube or stick type container or dispenser. The stick container will advance the product out of the container as the consumer uses the product. Such stick dispenser/container are described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,912,403.
For many marketing reasons, it is desirable to package and sell two compatible products together. However, due to the incompatible shape of the stick dispenser/container, a stick dispenser cannot be packaged with a bottled product without adding a cardboard container.
Alternatively, the two products could be wrapped in a clear plastic or cellophane wrapper and shrink-wrapped together or bonded together with a strap or tape. However, such a product would occupy excessive amount of shelf space and would be difficult to align neatly. As a result, retailers would not want to carry such products.
Further, once the consumer has unwrapped the package, the two products may become separated and any advantage for purchasing the two compatible products is lost.
In a commonly assigned co-pending application, Ser. No. 08/020,945, filed Feb. 19, 1993, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, there is disclosed a bottle and stick dispenser combination. The bottle has a cavity in a face for nesting the stick dispenser. The bottle has retaining means for releasably retaining the dispenser within the cavity in a snap or frictional fit.
It has been found that the bottle and stick dispenser combination of the co-pending application provides a suitable marketing vehicle. However since the cavity occupies one face of the bottle, the stick dispenser must be nested within either the front face or the rear face of the product. If the stick dispenser is nested on the front face, there is very little room left for labelling the product. If the stick dispenser is nested on the rear face, the consumer will not see the uniqueness of the product when it sits on the retail shelf.
It has also been found that the molded undercut retaining means of the bottle according to the co-pending application does not provide a high degree of gripping force. The gripping force can be increased by increasing the length of the molded undercut surface. However, increasing the length of the undercut surface presents serious molding problems, making molding more difficult with a higher rate of defective products being molded.